Field
1. The field of the invention is clothing, more particularly clothing articles which combine upper body outerwear and midsection underwear.
2. State of the Art
Conventional apparel includes traditional trunk covering shirts for men and boys and blouses for women and girls, along with separate underwear articles such as briefs and boxer shorts for men and midsection lingerie for women and girls. These upper body items are worn with lower body outerwear such as trousers or slacks for both men and women and skirts for the latter. Shirts and blouses are normally worn neatly tucked into the waist of the lower outside garment. The maintenance of this neat tuck, especially with smaller children, has been an unsolved problem for as long as shirts have been worn, especially for men and boys. A garment, sometimes called a body shirt, has been employed which has a crotch strap extension of the rear tail of a shirt attached releasably by snaps or the like to the front tails of the shirt. U.S. Pat. No. 3,840,900 discloses such a body shirt for men. The fabric of the rear tail of the shirt is shaped to form a seat portion, with a crotch strap sewn at one end to its lowermost extension. The strap is attached at its other end by snaps to the front shirt tails. The fabrics of which shirts are normally constructed are not highly adapted for comfort in the midsection region of the body. Any body movements tending to pull the shirt tails upwardly from the waistline is directly resisted by the tail connecting strap, with attendant uncomfortable stress and chafing in the sensitive crotch region, although soft lining may be applied to alleviate this problem to some extent. Underwear briefs, for example, worn under the strap provide welcome softness, but add unwanted binding and bunching bulk.
The need therefore remains for a comfortable, easily effected, solution to the shirt waist untucking problem.